1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to computing and in particular to the process in which data within an interlocking tree datastore is aggregated for expression in summary form, for various purposes such as performing distinct counts and statistical analysis.
2. Description of Related Art
Data aggregation is any process in which information is gathered and expressed in a summary form, to facilitate various purposes such as statistical analysis. Data aggregation methods for consolidating large amounts of complex data are fairly common in the art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,768,995, entitled “Real-time aggregation of data within an enterprise planning environment,” U.S. Patent Application Publication Nos. 2002/0143783 and 2005/0060325, both entitled “Method of a system for data aggregation employing dimensional hierarchy transformation,” and 2003/0009443, entitled “Generic data aggregation” teach methods for aggregating data that is stored in relational databases. The techniques taught in these references include mechanisms to consolidate data as new data sets or within OLAP cubes so that analysis can be performed through scripts and algorithms.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,768,995, entitled “Real-time aggregation of data within an enterprise planning environment,” mentioned above, teaches how to divide a database into the relational data area, the transactional data area, and server. The server publishes data from the transactional area to the relational area. The transactional area supports real-time interaction and the relational area allows detailed statistical analysis and report generation.
U.S. Patent Application Publication Nos. 2002/0143783 and 2005/0060325, mentioned above, teach a method of aggregating data having at least one dimension logically organized into multiple hierarchies of items, whereby such multiple hierarchies of items are transformed into a single hierarchy that is functionally equivalent to the multiple hierarchies. In the hierarchy transformation process, a given child item is linked with a parent item in the single hierarchy when no other child item linked to the parent item has a child item in common with the given child item.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2003/0009443, entitled “Generic data aggregation,” and also mentioned above, teaches methods, devices for increasing the speed of processing data by filtering, classifying, and generically applying logical functions to the data without data-specific instructions.
The forgoing systems and methods can often produce satisfying results. However, they all appear to use relational databases and methods in attempts to increase the speed of data aggregation. They also appear to teach how to design structures within relational databases that enable the user to separate transactional from relational (stored) data.
The KStore technology addresses many common problems associated with relational databases and the aggregation of data, by modeling that data into a structure with a predefined process that relates all new data to existing data within the interlocking trees datastore model. As described in U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 10/385,421, entitled “System and method for storing and accessing data in an interlocking trees datastore” published as U.S. Patent Application Publication number 20040181547 on Sep. 16, 2004 and 10/666,382, entitled “System and method for storing and accessing data in an interlocling trees datastore” published as U.S. Patent Application Publication number 20050076011 on Apr. 7, 2005 the KStore data structure does not require any distinction between transactional data and stored (relational) data. A system for efficiently using an interlocking trees datastore as described in the '421 and '382 applications just mentioned was also described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/879,329.
All references cited herein are incorporated herein by reference in their entireties.